Ram Guha

Ramachandra Guha (born 29 April 1958) is an eminent Indian historian and writer whose research interests have included environmental, social, political and cricket history. He is also a columnist for the newspapers The Telegraph (syndicated in several Indian languages), and Hindustan Times. A regular contributor to various academic journals, Guha has written extensively for the magazine Outlook, where he masters over a classic genre of narrative non fiction.

Between 1985 and 2000, he taught at various universities in India, Europe and North America, including the University of California, Berkeley, Yale University, Stanford University and at Oslo University (Arne Naess chair, 2008), and later at the Indian Institute of Science. During this period, he was also a fellow of Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin in Germany (1994–95).
Guha then moved to Bangalore, and began writing full time. He served as Sundaraja Visiting Professor in the Humanities at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, in 2003. He is managing trustee of the New India Foundation, a nonprofit body that funds research on modern Indian history.
He is the author of India after Gandhi, published by Macmillan and Ecco in 2007.

In 2000, Guha penned an essay critiquing an article written by writer and activist Arundhati Roy opposing the Narmada Dam. Roy espoused the cause of the Narmada Bachao Andolan, a cause Guha is also a supporter of. However, he questioned her expertise in the relevant field and argued that her activities and writings undermined rather than helped the cause. Roy responded in an interview, saying that Guha was a cricket historian who had missed the boat.

In 2009, Guha joined several other well-known historians in signing a petition that criticized the functioning of the prestigious Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML) in Delhi. The petition, also signed by such well-known academics as Sumit Sarkar, Nivedita Menon, Nayanjot Lahiri, Mushirul Hasan, Mukul Kesavan, Mahesh Rangarajan and Krishna Kumar, alleged that the institution was being run in an inefficient and corrupt fashion. They point out that NMML has discontinued its publication programme, and that the acquisition of manuscripts and oral histories have all but come to a halt.[1]. In turn, writer and activist Madhu Kishwar, environmentalist Pradeep Kishen and historians Irfan Habib and D.N. Jha have come out in support of NMML and it's director Mridula Mukherjee. Subsequently, the government found that the transfer of funds was done "with the approval of the competent authority." Mridula Mukherjee and the NMML was given a clean chit by the Ministry of Culture, repudiating Guha's allegations.

Guha was appointed the Philippe Roman Chair of International Affairs and History at the London School of Economics for 2011–12, succeeding Niall Ferguson.